Sex & growth

In a brilliant essay John Quiggin asks:

Supposing a Keynesian utopia [of a short working week] is feasible, will we want it? Or will we prefer to keep chasing after money to buy more and better things?

A new paper by economists at the University of Western Australia suggest that the answer to this question lies in sex. They describe a model in which men undertake conspicuous consumption in order to attract women, and to fund this consumption they work long hours or set up businesses:

The male signalling behaviour necessary to attract potential mates underpins modern levels of economic growth. As females prefer males who conspicuously consume, an increasing proportion of males engage in innovation, labour and other productive activities in order to engage in conspicuous consumption. These activities contribute to technological progress and economic growth.

This echoes a paper (pdf) by Jill Sundie and colleagues which demonstrates experimentally that men looking for casual sex really do spend more on conspicuous consumption, and that women looking for a fling are more attracted (ceteris paribus) to men who buy Porsche Boxsters than Honda Civics. They say:

Just as peacocks have evolved to flaunt their wasteful tails before potential mates, men might similarly woo with wasteful expenditures to charm potential mates.

Perhaps, therefore, men work longer than necessary in part simply because they want to shag around.

This suggests that economic growth will be n-shaped with respect to sex. Where there are strong taboos against non-marital sex, the motive for conspicuous consumption will be weak - because it'll not get you sex anyway - and so labour supply and innovation and growth will be weak. But where women give it up for anyone, there'll be no need for men to spend to impress, so growth will also be weak. It's middling degrees of sexual promiscuity that are best for growth.

History is consistent with this. Max Weber relates how, in traditionalist societies, it was very hard to get men to work more than the bare minimum - though he had very different ideas as to how this habit was overcome! And economic growth in such societies tends to be negligible.

By contrast, growth in the west was fastest in the 1950s and 60s when traditional sexual morality weakened, and  - as Mad Men shows us - economically successful men could shag around.

Whether the slowdown in growth since then is related to an increased availablity of sex for men and hence a decline in the need for conspicuous consumption is a matter of which I have no knowledge.

Comments

[Nick L]

Economic opportunities for women are also likely to have a bearing on preferences for wealthy partners. There are other forms of non-economic status competition too, as evidenced by hipster culture. In a Keynesian utopia, would-be Casanovas might need their free time to keep abreast of the latest art-house films and noise-wave bands.

[LordSidcup]

Having lived in both Scandinavia, the US and Britain, I can report that Nordic women (in general) are less impressed by the status wealth gives and are less available for casual sex.

[Luis Enrique]

I like n-shaped much better than the ubiquitous inverted-U shaped, why haven't I thought of that before?

[meanwhile I am not at all sure that men pursuing conspicuous consumption is a plausible determinant of technological progress, but it's a nice thought]

[Account Deleted]

Madison Avenue was atypical of the 50s and 60s, and Mad Men certainly shouldn't be read as a sociological study. As a number of recent histories have pointed out, guilt-free shagging didn't really take off for the mass of people until the 70s.

A better sex=growth argument might be that Haight Ashbury and SF's bath houses resulted in the invention of the Web, though you could equally make the argument that this was down to more and better drugs.

What I don't understand is why Paris didn't become the capital of bling after 1968.

[KenryHissinger]

To quote the late great Ralphie Cifaretto, a Boxter is a "Porsche with Panties".

[WHY CAN'T PEOPLE DO VICTORIAN HISTORY PROPERLY]

One could also point that with the costs of health, education and housing rising in most developed countries. Remember we consider these necessities.

[Zorblog]

You should put this post in relation to the "Researcher vs Bloggers" post that was advertised here on the right column the other day.
Daron Acemoglu is complaining about the criticisms over his research, where he shows that innovation is supposedly faster in the USA than in Sweden, supposedly because social welfare in Scandinavia drives incentives away.

This sex explanation looks far more convincing.
(By the way, congratulations Chris, you found the perfect way to boost the statistics of your blog with this post)

[Anonymous]

Now I understand why I'm not a babe magnet.

[Walter]

so maybe to boost productivity we should ban pornography.

[Anonymous]

By gum! That lass in the photo looks fit.

[john malpas]

So are medical GPs losing their sex drive.
They used to do home calls and night calls as well as their day time clinics.
And now they don't.